New Delhi, March 24 -- The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced 111 additional candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections on Sunday. The list includes notable changes such as the exclusion of Union ministers Ashwini Kumar Choubey and V K Singh, and MP Varun Gandhi. However, actors Kangana Ranaut and Arun Govil have been included as new candidates.
Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan will run from Sambalpur, and Sambit Patra, the party's spokesperson, will contest from Puri, a seat he narrowly lost in 2019.
Anantkumar Hegde, a former Union minister and a six-term Lok Sabha member from Uttara Kannada, known for his hardline Hindutva stance, has been dropped this time.
The party has denied tickets to about 37 sitting MPs in the latest list, including nine in Uttar Pradesh, five in Gujarat, four in Odisha, and three each in Bihar, Karnataka, and Jharkhand.
The list does not include MPs who won recent Assembly elections like Diya Kumari and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore in Rajasthan, or Nayab Singh Saini, the new Haryana chief minister, or Hisar MP Brijendra Singh, who has left the party. K Surendra, the Kerala BJP president, will contest from Wayanad, the seat currently held by former Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
Rekha Patra, reportedly one of the Sadeshkhali victims, has been fielded from West Bengal's Basirhat constituency to challenge the ruling Trinamool Congress.
The party has announced candidates for all 17 seats it is contesting in Bihar, including Union minister Giriraj Singh from Begusarai and former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad from Patna Sahib.
Union ministers R K Singh and Nityanand Rai have been renominated from their current seats. In Uttar Pradesh, the party has announced 13 more candidates. Varun Gandhi, a three-term Lok Sabha MP from Pilibhit, has been denied a ticket, but his mother Maneka Gandhi has been renominated from Sultanpur.
Jitin Prasada, a state government minister, will contest from Pilibhit, while Atul Garg will replace two-term MP V K Singh in Ghaziabad. Three leaders who joined the BJP on Sunday, Naveen Jindal from Kurukshetra, Haryana government minister Ranjit Chautala from Hisar (both in Haryana), and Varaprasad Rao from
Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, have been included in the list. With this list of 111 candidates, the party has announced 398 nominees for the 543-member Lok Sabha, excluding four who withdrew due to controversies.
Kangana Ranaut, a vocal BJP supporter, will contest from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh, while veteran actor Arun Govil, known for his role as Lord Ram in the TV serial "Ramayan", will run from Meerut.
Sita Soren, former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren's sister-in-law, is the BJP's candidate from Dumka.
Former Karnataka chief minister Jagadish Shettar will contest from Belgaum.
The party has announced 19 more candidates from West Bengal, including former Calcutta High Court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay from Tamluk.
Dilip Ghosh, the MP from Medinipur, has been shifted to Bardhaman-Durgapur, replacing incumbent S S Ahluwalia.
The party has announced seven candidates from Rajasthan, four each from Haryana, Karnataka, and Kerala, 18 from Odisha, and three each from Maharashtra and Jharkhand among other states.
D Purandeswari, the party's Andhra Pradesh president, will contest from Rajahmundry and former chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy from Rajampet. BJP vice president Baijayant Panda will contest from Kendrapara, a constituency he has represented twice in the Lok Sabha as a BJD member.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.